shlevy asked: Can you explain a bit more concretely what something being a "protected position" actually looks like? That is, if someone thinks X is wrong but X is protected in their social group, how is their behavior likely to differ relative to an X not protected in their social group?

shlevy:

nostalgebraist:

Also, does the protectedness of a position manifest itself in the behavior of those who believe it, or only those who don’t but are in the social group that protects it?

It’s solely in the behavior of those who are in the social group but don’t believe it.  The behaviors I’m thinking of, in such people, are

(1) the person does not lower their estimate of someone’s credibility, intelligence, reasonableness, etc. after learning that they believe X, even though they would do those things if they learned that someone believed Y, where Y is a non-protected position they disbelieve with the same amount of confidence they disbelieve X,

(1b) in fact, learning that someone believes X may improve their view of that person, insofar as it indicates that they are “one of my sort of people,” “thinking along the same lines I do,” “in the right general part of idea space,” etc.,

(2) although the person will not (necessarily) engage in motivated reasoning in deciding whether X is true, they will engage in motivated reasoning in deciding whether the behavior described in (1) is the right choice.

Again, I’m going to use the alternative medicine community as an example.  What I’ve found is that there are a lot of people who don’t outright endorse the more dubious aspects of alternative medicine – stuff like homeopathy and anti-vax beliefs – but nonetheless treat these beliefs in ways (1) and (2).

If you mention a non-protected “crackpot” idea like, say, Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories, these people will not only admit that they don’t believe this idea, they’ll also treat it with the same casual dismissiveness that the average person shows toward all “crackpot” ideas.  They will happily lower their opinions of people who espouse the idea, and will not show any particular interest in it beyond, if pressed, shrugging and admitting that, well, anything’s possible in principle.  If you mention an idea like homeopathy, however, the person will insist on a nuanced distinction between “homeopathy is ineffective” (their opinion) and “those who believe homeopathy is effective are silly” (which they staunchly oppose).  You will hear points about keeping an open mind, about how uncertain medical science is, about intriguing unexplained scientific results, about big pharma, etc. – you will hear these things even if they admit that they themselves don’t put any stock in homeopathy at all.  In short, the person can tolerate disagreement with homeopathy, but not dismissal of it.

Another example is anti-GMO beliefs – my father does not actually seem to think GMOs are bad, but he is much more protective of the idea, in the way described above, than he is of the typical idea he just so happens not to believe in.

I should clarify that I don’t think this behavior is necessarily wrong, or that it lacks sensible motivations.  In particular, if one sees someone making an egregious mistake that one made oneself in the past, that can be evidence that the person is an intellectual kindred spirit, rather than the opposite.  (You can see this in some former libertarians, who view people who currently espouse libertarianism as “at least thinking along the right lines.”)  I think the important thing is not to reject this behavior entirely (which may well be impossible), but to realize consciously that one is doing it, rather than acting like one treats all positions with equal charity when that is not the case.

Trying to rephrase this in LW language, would you agree with this description of the phenomenon?

“A group can be said to protect a position when those who don’t believe it nevertheless treat it as a reliable signal of in-group status, along with all the positive associations that entails. This is not inherently bad, but ought to be treated with the same caution other signalling games are, and in particular oughtn’t be confused with intellectual charity”

Sure.  (This description isn’t quite the same – since it compresses into “all the positive associations that entails” some things I specifically described, as well as some things I didn’t – but it’s at worst a useful shorthand for, and at best an outright better idea than, what I said.)